Traditionally, the latest technology and electronics advancements in commercial markets came from research and equipment for aerospace and defense platforms. Many products that are now a regular part of our lives — like CAT scans, camera phones and scratch-resistant eyeglass lenses — exist due to years of development efforts by the aerospace and defense industry.  

Today, this script has flipped. Commercially available technologies are now being used in aerospace and defense mission platforms and across domains, from the land and sea to the air and space. This shift is creating an opportunity for organizations to quickly obtain new capabilities at lower costs. 

The future of space: Chip-scale technology and data processing 

Advanced in-orbit processing has never been more in demand across the commercial and defense sectors, and there are many reasons why. Space is becoming commercialized, resulting in new architectures and a demand for low-cost space-compliant components. Software-defined architectures are lowering satellite costs due to their ability to allow for remote upgrades. Latency can be minimized to enable better rapid response times to advanced emerging threats, and data can be preprocessed so only relevant information is sent to the ground.  

And though the demand for these in-orbit processing capabilities continues to expand, the physical size of the average satellite platform is shrinking. This, combined with a space economy that’s heating up, has resulted in a rapidly increasing demand for low-cost microelectronics and chip-scale technology capable of standing up to the rigors of space. Meeting this need will require an evolution in the production of space-bound electronics, which comes with traditionally high costs and lengthy development times. 

Commercial technology and your future-ready space partner  

Mercury Systems is leading the evolution to radiation-tolerant chip-scale processing solutions, using its cutting-edge microelectronics capabilities to dramatically increase technical capabilities within a smaller physical footprint.​ For decades, we have been designing rugged electronics capable of operating under numerous extreme conditions, from vibration and impact to radiation-filled environments.  

This experience as a foundational space-standards pioneer — including the more than 20,000 space-qualified devices and solutions we have delivered — means we have a distinct understanding of the challenges of power, computing and storage in space. Additionally, our unique position at the intersection of high tech and defense has allowed us to become a partner of choice in both the semiconductor industry for supplying commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) processing hardware and for several satellite companies when it comes to bringing the latest technologies to their builds. Together, this means that we’re well-positioned to provide affordable, reliable and advanced space-based microelectronic solutions to those who matter most — our customers.  

Space hardware that meets open standards and the latest open architectures is something we do, but it is not all that we do. Learn about the Mercury Processing Platform and how our core capabilities in sensor processing, mission compute, command and control, and communication serve the defense information processing ecosystem — from data to decision.